Wednesday 2 March 2011

Am I just too Right Brained for my own good?

I've always thought of myself as foremost a left brained person.  I was a lawyer in Scotland - I almost studied maths instead of law at university.  I am skeptical, and,  most of the time, composed and thoughtful rather than reactionary and emotional.  In writing, however, I can really get into the flow and lose myself in the imaginary world, and in doing so the details of it come alive to me, and I write them down.  That is how, I like to think, I can come up with some half-way decent short stories.

I have 'won' Nanowrimo both years I have entered.  As I said, I used to be a lawyer, verbosity comes easy to me.  Each year, however, I have come undone as I careened headlong into the 40,000s in the third week, comfortable I was going to make the word count goal.  I was barely half way through the 'story' and I had no idea how to end it.  Or, to be more precise, I knew what I wanted the last chapter to achieve, but I had no idea how to get my story to that point.  And so, I would stop writing at the end of November, with 50,000 words and change. And people would congratulate me.  And I would feel like a failure, and couldn't admit it. 

I have just started a new writing book called 'Narrative Design' by Madison Smart Bell.  The preface suggests that the creativity of the right brain, just like with musical improvisation, needs some basic structure to 'improv' over.  As a musician, you need an innate understanding of chord progressions before you can improvise around them.  This makes sense to me, and I can see that this is probably what I am missing.  I can create, but it is formless when it grows any larger than about 5,000 words. 
Is this something some people come to naturally? Do their left brains take over at this point, and insert the form where necessary?  Where do they get the form from - is it something they have intuitively picked up from reading?  If so, it appears I am a little left brain deficient.
So now I am on a task to learn the form, as it seems it is not something I can intuit.  I'm not sure how I'm going to go about it - finishing Narrative Design will probably be a good start.  Any other ideas for how to do this (short of joining an MFA course, I don't have that sort of money!) gratefully appreciated.  And as I figure it out, I will let you know, and if you are in a similar position to me, I hope it helps.

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